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Misperceptions abound in
US
By Matthew Riemer
A poll
conducted in early August by the Washington Post
revealed that 68 percent of Americans believe that
Saddam Hussein played a role in the September 11, 2001,
attacks despite a continuing lack of evidence of such
direct involvement or of even a vaguer relationship
between Saddam and Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda.
Such a discrepancy between available facts,
evidence and public perception should elicit at least
mild interest from those concerned with the continued
functioning of a well-oiled, self-critical democracy
based upon an informed citizenry in the United States.
This poll raises two pressing and critical
questions: Why do seven out of 10 Americans believe what
the Post itself called an "apparently groundless
belief"?
The Post essentially answers this
question in its own analysis, but is hesitant to draw
what seems like a painstakingly obvious conclusion: that
this widely-held misbelief is a direct result of the
speeches and statements made by various members of the
Bush administration, including the president himself,
Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Secretary
of State Colin Powell.
A plethora of such
statements are readily available from a large pool of
sources and their further documentation here serves no
real purpose, but some of the more telling ones are
worth mentioning.
The Post asserts that this
notion is "without prompting from Washington" yet goes
on to document a litany of statements from the Bush
administration that directly contradict this. For
example, in the months following September 11, Cheney
said that it was "pretty well confirmed" that Mohammed
Atta and Iraqi intelligence operatives had meetings
before the terrorist attacks took place.
In one
of President George W Bush's most talked about
statements, he said, "The battle of Iraq is one victory
in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001
- and still goes on." In the same speech he added,
"We've removed an ally of al-Qaeda." In his most recent
speech, the president called Iraq the new battlefield in
the "war on terrorism".
These are two from among
literally dozens of statements in which Bush explicitly
links September 11 with Saddam and Iraq by referring to
the efforts to bring to justice those complicit in the
hijackings and the US's most recent war in Iraq as both
being part of the "war on terrorism". When the first
statement is stripped of its linguistic fat, Bush is
saying that the war with Iraq began on September 11.
Afghanistan is very rarely mentioned in these
statements.
How does this affect how the rest of
the world thinks of and judges Americans and their
government?
As the results of this poll are
considered throughout the world it can only produce
feelings of smug satisfaction from all corners.
Europeans especially will point to such information as
being indicative of Americans' lack of knowledge and
seriousness when it comes to history and current
international affairs. Whether or not this is the case
is basically moot, as that very perception is already in
place and the trans-Atlantic divide seems as healthy as
ever.
However, as much as polls and stories like
this affect how Americans are perceived and how foreign
governments deal with the US, the timing couldn't be
worse. Washington is now asking for widespread
assistance and money from countries who opposed the war
in the face of the now self- admitted fact that the Bush
administration misjudged how long an occupation of Iraq
would last, how much it would cost to rebuild Iraq, and
how much oil revenue would be generated to make that
rebuilding process a self-funding effort, as Wolfowitz
once hinted.
Finally, on the domestic front, the
situation is bad for Bush and his prospects for
re-election as Democrats will surely point to these
numbers as evidence that the Bush administration misled
the public into what many Americans now feel was an
ill-conceived war. Indeed, Bush's approval ratings have
been steadily falling, primarily due to the economy but
partly due to the continued instability and loss of
American lives in Iraq. In May, a Time Magazine/CNN poll
of registered voters showed that Bush had a 63 percent
approval rating. Now, in early September, that approval
rating is down to 52 percent. If the Bush administration
fails to show evidence tying together al-Qaeda and the
Iraqi Ba'ath Party, in addition to failing to prevent
the proportionally high number of American casualties in
Iraq, the American people may begin to feel more and
more alienated from this administration.
Published with permission of the Power and
Interest News Report, an analysis-based
publication that seeks to provide insight into various
conflicts, regions and points of interest around the
globe. All comments should be directed to
content@pinr.com
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